


At the End of Infinity

by bvnut



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Because We Can Do Better, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Gen, Major rewrite, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Somewhat Comics-Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-21
Updated: 2018-10-21
Packaged: 2019-08-05 13:04:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16368182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bvnut/pseuds/bvnut
Summary: After Thanos has killed every hero who stands against him, the only one who can stop him is Nebula. But what will it take for her to fight against the man who has beaten her into submission for her entire life? And what will she discover about herself in the process?





	At the End of Infinity

**Author's Note:**

> This story was an attempt to merge comics canon with film canon. Clearly that did not happen, so this is likely to serve as the prelude to a much larger rewrite of the film in general.
> 
> The original Infinity Gauntlet Saga was one of my favorite comic arcs ever (right up there with the Phoenix Saga and the original 1980s Secret Wars), and I only hope I'm doing well with the work that Jim Starlin set up for us.
> 
> I hope you enjoy it.

Everything had gone silent.

The broken bodies all around her lay in their twisted, dead positions where they had fallen. The bodies of those who had rallied to oppose Thanos, and had paid the price for their foolhardy courage.

The red-and-gold-armored man slumped against the base of a shattered wall, the bent and broken shards of his armor giving way to bent and broken flesh beneath. The axe-wielding demigod's torso was crushed beneath a fallen pillar, his glassy blue eyes staring unblinkingly, unseeingly upward. The green giant's upper body protruded from a mound of rubble; his legs lay some distance away where Thanos had callously tossed them after ripping him bodily apart. And the blonde man in stars and stripes, the last one to die, who'd strode unflinchingly up to Thanos after watching his comrades mercilessly slaughtered...

The courageous words he'd said echoed in Nebula's mind as she cowered behind a cracked statue. _“As long as there's even one person left standing against you, Thanos,”_ the man had said in a voice that never wavered, _“you’ll never be able to claim victory.”_

Her father had sneered down at the man in response. _“Noble sentiments,”_ he'd rumbled, _“From one who is about to die.”_

 _“I’ve lived my life by those sentiments,”_ the man had replied, his jaw clenched and his body untrembling. _“They’re more than worth dying for.”_

And then Thanos had blasted him into atoms.

So many dead, she thought wildly. So many who had been stronger than she was, faster, tougher, their powers more versatile, their wills far more indomitable. She was the only one left. And if these warriors - these heroes - had been unable to defeat her father, then what chance did she have?

What chance had she ever had against him? Against anyone?

The silence shrieked in her ears until she couldn't stand it a moment longer. It had gone too quiet, too still, even after the massive outpouring of Thanos’ wrath. He should have been laughing in triumph, gloating at the stars, bellowing his godhood to the universe...

She steeled her nerves and chanced a glimpse above the jagged edge of the broken statue. And what she saw made no sense to her.

Her father stood there, in the middle of a wide circle that had been blasted flat by his powers in the last battle. His face was set in that grim smile of triumph that she had grown to know and loathe throughout her long and agonizing life with him. His arms were motionless by his sides. His eyes were open, fixed on some point in the sky.

They did not blink.

The thought that he was dead slammed into her mind just ahead of a more rational impulse that clamped down and reminded her to think logically. He was astral projecting, this cold and calculating part of her said; reaching out with his mind to see and explore and attempt to conquer other planes of existence.

Which meant that he was vulnerable. Defenseless, even, while his body was here and his mind was elsewhere.

If there was ever a chance...

She lunged. Sprinted towards him with every last bit of desperate strength she had left, and before she could think better of it, seized the Gauntlet.

It came off easily. More easily than she'd expected, and she stumbled with the force of the yank she'd given it. But her hand was already sliding into it, and Thanos’ eyes came back into focus a second too late -

_Power!_

The sudden rush of power, limitless, infinite, and absolute, overwhelmed her in an instant. But in that instant, she realized what it truly was to be omnipotent.

She had spent her entire life being weak. Repeatedly bested in combat by her sister despite years of training and painful physical modifications. Cowed and beaten and torn to pieces both physically and mentally by her father. Unable to do anything but scream in anguish and terror as she lost more and more of her body until what was finally left was a pitiful wreck that wasn't her, would never again be her. Always having to vent her boundless rage and frustration on those weaker than herself, knowing that it made her a coward and a bully and despising herself for it, but needing to be stronger than someone, anyone...

And now, she was stronger than _everyone_.

From her great height - had she grown to enormous proportions after donning the Gauntlet, or was this some illusion of its power? - she looked down on the tiny, devastated wasteland below her, at the miniature purplish figure that raged impotently at her and yet couldn't break through the shield she must have erected without thinking, and felt truly strong for the first time in her memory.

No, not merely strong. Powerful.

 _All_ -powerful.

She could do anything, she realized with a sudden dizzying feeling. She was limited only by her own imagination. She could reach out and grasp the stars in her hands. Bathe in the fire of a sun, or swim in the cool ether. She could stride from planet to planet as easily as skipping from stone to stone in a river, or straddle a comet and ride it wherever it took her. She could hold worlds in her hands like children's toys, toss them from hand to hand in idleness or break them across her knee like ripe melons, and there would be nothing to stop her.

Nothing was beyond her now.

She could go planeswalking if she desired. Send her mind to different realities. Travel through different times and different dimensions and make herself the absolute ruler of them all, commanding fear and respect as a goddess should. Or tear them down and remake them into anything she wanted them to be, or destroy them utterly with but a thought.

She could finally have her revenge. Finally, after a life of mental and physical and emotional agony, she could kill her father - torture him to death, resurrect him any number of times and kill him over and over again until she grew tired of it. She could force him to spend a millennium or more trapped in his own mind, seeing and feeling nothing but the pain he had caused her and suffering from it as ceaselessly as she had, and it would take nothing more than -

A snap of her fingers.

She came back to herself with a sudden cold shock, like plunging into an icy pool after emerging from a blistering furnace. And the realization that lanced into her suddenly was like a needle of frozen Cotati-metal, piercing her to the core of her soul and halting her mind dead in its tracks.

If she killed her father now - if she made the deliberate choice to use the power of the Gauntlet simply for her own vengeance - she would become just like him.

_"Nebula!"_

A tickle in her mind, a tickle in the shape of a voice that was somehow familiar and yet oddly distorted. Changing all the time, as if it were a child's voice and then a grown woman's and then something in between. She frowned. Where was this voice coming from?

_"Nebula! Sister! Help us!"_

The Gauntlet hummed on her hand, as if calling her to attention. Looking down into it, her eyes were drawn to the orange stone at the last knuckle. The one Thanos had tortured her to obtain, for he'd known Gamora would give up its location if it meant sparing her any more torment.

The one Gamora had died for.

The orange stone - the Soul Stone, she knew - seemed to grow larger as she stared at it, until it encompassed all her field of vision and she could see nothing but swirling orange mists.

And then, from out of the mists, her sister's face.

Gamora's face was changing in the same way her voice had, her features aging and regressing randomly, so that she might appear at one moment to be a child, and the next moment as old as she'd been the last time Nebula had seen her.

The last time...

Nebula felt a pang to remember it. Hanging from the ceiling of Thanos's chamber of pain, her body peeled apart in layers, every passing moment a lifetime of agony, she'd seen and heard Gamora's anguish at her torture. Her sister had risked the whole of the universe in order to spare her any more torment, and paid for it with her life.

Her own, and countless others’.

And before that, when she'd caught up to Gamora on Ego's planet. When she'd fought Gamora with everything she had, and yet been unable to bring herself to deliver the killing blow in the end. When she'd slumped down beside her and bared her soul, the words tumbling out as her helpless frustration finally boiled over. When she'd admitted to Gamora at long last that all she had ever wanted was to have her as a sister rather than a perpetual opponent.

Gamora had embraced her at the end of it all. After Ego’s destruction, after Yondu’s funeral, when she’d been trying to slip away unnoticed while the rest of them had come together as a family. And she'd been too stunned, or perhaps too emotionally crippled by a lifetime of abuse, to return that embrace. Or to become part of that family.

 _“You will always be my sister,”_ Gamora had said to her. And she’d pulled away from Gamora’s embrace, turned, and fled without saying a word in response.

So many lost chances. So many missed opportunities. So many regrets in a universe filled with pain.

But there was more, wasn't there? There had to be more.

All the power of the universe was at her fingertips, and its siren song hummed seductively in her ears, in her mind, in her veins. But Gamora’s voice had pulled her back from the edge, from the brink of surrendering to that power as her father had. No, she told herself in a clear and precise voice that rang in her mind like a bell, she would not let the power master her.

Which meant she had to master it instead. Or else run the risk of losing control of it altogether, allowing it to fall back into the hands of her father or even someone worse. It would be impossibly difficult, like holding a star in her bare hands. But if she couldn’t…

 _“You can,”_ Gamora’s voice whispered. _“I believe in you.”_

The power was immense, pulsing through her like the very heartbeat of the universe. When she blinked her eyes, she found herself still looking at the Gauntlet. Her father had used it to ravage the universe, and he’d done it easily, but the power was hers now. And what was done could be undone, though it would be much harder.

It was always easy to destroy, she knew; her life had been spent in pursuit of nothing else. But to build something, to create something, took real effort. A thing which had taken only seconds to destroy might have required lifetimes to create. And when she shamefully looked back on her life, she could not recall ever having created anything worthwhile.

But now she would.

She flexed her fist inside the Gauntlet and felt its response. The Stones quivered and hummed in their sockets, as if eager to be used. But to do what she wanted to do, she would have to use all of them in unison.

First, she would need power. Power beyond measure or description or even imagination. Raw power, elemental energy, the very force of the universe itself, to fuel the feat she needed to accomplish.

The deep purple Power Stone flashed brightly in response.

She would have to expand her presence throughout the cosmos, be present everywhere at once in order to oversee the work that must be done. She would need to be everywhere, see everything, be able to touch and affect and interact with every piece of every world in every corner of the universe.

The bright blue Space Stone shimmered as if to answer her.

She would need to accomplish in a single split second this immensely complex feat which might easily take decades. She would have to compress and collapse time itself, shoehorning every action she would need to perform into an eyeblink.

The rich green Time Stone seemed to wink in reply.

The very fabric of reality would have to be unwoven and reknitted around the new path it needed to take. Different strands, different possibilities, different pathways must merge. New ones would be created, and some might be destroyed. But all of reality - everything that existed - would be affected.

The blood-red Reality Stone rippled and undulated in acknowledgment.

All this would require intense focus, and if she were not careful, her mind might shatter under the strain of splitting her attention in so many different directions at once.

The calm yellow Mind Stone shone in response.

And finally, every living being who had been affected by the devastation Thanos had wreaked across the universe would have to be restored. Every single one, from the primitive life forms who had only just begun to develop their own sentience to creatures from galaxy-spanning empires like the Shi’ar and the Kree. All of them, right down to her own sister and the ragtag band of adventurers who had taken her in.

Gamora smiled at her from the depths of the warm orange Soul Stone.

Nebula smiled back. Took a deep breath. Steeled herself against what was to come.

And began her work.

It was like standing in the middle of a vast plain and watching an ocean race in on her from all sides. When the power she’d unleashed from the Gauntlet slammed into her, it was all she could do to remain in control of it. Her hand, then her arm, then her whole body began to cramp and burn as she strained to bend the energy to her will. It was too much, too vast an amount of power for her to channel by herself -

But there was no choice. And so she hung on, gritted her teeth, bit her lip until she tasted blood, and forced herself to control the cosmic storm that swirled and raged with her at its center.

And all across the universe, the havoc and destruction her father had caused began to be undone.

The blasted wastelands of Xandar, of Knowhere, of each and every world he had ravaged in his quest for the Stones were made whole. The callous destruction the Black Order had visited on so many worlds at his command was painstakingly undone. Every structure he’d flattened, every craft and vehicle he’d ruined, every single leaf and grain of sand he’d disturbed by his passing since he’d begun to acquire the Stones was restored. Rainbow-hued waves of energy swept over the planets, washing away every trace of Thanos’s devastation and leaving the blighted land as it had been before it had known his presence.

Reaching out with trillions of tiny threads of consciousness, she watched as pillars of ash swirled up from the ground on countless worlds. Stirred as if by miniature tornadoes, they grew and coalesced into the forms of living creatures, some humanoid, some not. The ash seemed to melt away, leaving behind flesh and blood in every color of the rainbow.

And when the body of every single living thing Thanos had unmade had been remade, only then did Nebula loose the power of the Soul Stone.

The force of the energy blasting from the Stone nearly tore her apart as she fought and strained and screamed her throat raw in her desperate struggle to direct it. Every inch of her burned as though she were standing in the center of a blast furnace.

And yet the fire did not consume her.

Coiling shafts of orange light arced from her hand to every rebuilt body on every world in the universe. The lifeless forms glowed like banked coals, shimmered with coruscating orange radiance for a long moment, and lit the universe aglow with the light of life in a few seconds of heartbreaking beauty.

And as the light faded, the first breaths were taken. The first few sets of eyes opened. The first thoughts crossed newly-reawoken minds, and the first words were spoken. All across the universe, there were shouts of joy, cries of elation, embraces of love, and tears of reunion.

Nebula staggered, nearly drained of energy from the intense effort of directing the phenomenal power of the Gauntlet. Her body was wracked with pain and exhaustion, and her mind reeled from the exertion. It would have been so easy to give in, to close her eyes and drift away into nothingness, knowing that she had undone the great wrong her father had done.

But there was more left to do.

Thanos still raged impotently at her, his insane ranting and his heavy blows shunted aside by the shield she had unknowingly called up around herself. He could not harm her, and she would not allow him to harm anything else. And so, free from the fear that had always cowed her into submission towards him, she could study him for the first time.

His madness must have had a source. There must have been some catalyst, some trigger, some incident or event that had started him down the path to insanity. And to protect the universe from him - because even without the Stones, he was one of the most powerful beings alive and could easily do serious harm to countless worlds and people - she had to discover what it was.

She reached out with the Mind Stone.

The inside of her father’s mind was strangely calm. Orderly, even - the regimented and perfectly organized consciousness of a psychopath rather than the disjointed chaos of a psychotic. This discovery did not surprise her; she’d never known Thanos to behave like a madman. But he was undeniably insane, and she had to find some way of mitigating that.

And like a compass, the Stone showed her the way.

Thanos’s memories of Titan were at the very center of his perfectly arranged garden of thoughts. Memories not only of how Titan had once been - lush and green and beautiful, teeming with living things of all sizes, colors, and descriptions - but also of how it had changed. His anger and sorrow at the waste, the callous mistreatment of his homeworld until it had been too late to halt its slide into ruin, burned hot in the core of his being, its bitter, poisonous venom seeping out to taint every aspect of his soul.

It had become his obsession, she realized as she sifted through his memories. The forcible attainment of balance, the imposition of his own will on every single world throughout the universe in an attempt to prevent another tragedy like the one that had befallen Titan, had sunk its roots into his mind and strangled every other ambition until everything else had been forgotten. Crushed, suffocated, strangled, or simply pushed aside. Discarded as worthless.

Just as he had discarded her and Gamora.

And worse, even though his intentions might have been good once upon a time, his obsession with balance, with the finite nature of resources, and with the notion that sentient creatures were fundamentally incapable of finding equilibrium with their world, had twisted those intentions out of all recognition.

It was impossible for her to hate him now. Not with the singleminded vitriol she’d nurtured for so many years. Not now that she’d undone the culmination of his lifelong quest, and not when she was about to see to it that he would never be able to harm another living thing as long as he lived.

No, she realized. Now she almost pitied him.

 _Save your pity for the universe,_ his voice rumbled in her ears. It was magnified a thousand times by her presence in his mind, and she instinctively flinched back from it.

 _You think you’ve saved them?_ he went on. The sky overhead seemed to roil, the clouds of his mindscape gathering together to form an image of his glowering face. _You’ve doomed them. I would at least have left half the universe alive, but you?_ The great face frowned. _You’ve sentenced them all to death._

“You don’t know that,” she said aloud, the Mind Stone glowing as she amplified her own voice to match his. “I’m at least giving them a chance. But you never did believe in that, did you?”

 _What chance did Titan have?_ Flashes of lightning shimmered in the cloud-face of Thanos above her, and thunder rumbled ominously. _That world was brought to ruin by the capricious recklessness of its people. They chose not to see the destruction they were bringing on themselves, and the innocent paid the price for it._

“Don’t you dare talk to me about innocence.” She clenched her fists, felt the Gauntlet respond, but managed to pull herself back. It would have been so easy right then to fall into her old habit of lashing out in anger at the slightest provocation, but the thought of becoming any more like Thanos than she already was kept her grounded.

“My sister and I were innocent.” She spoke in a voice that trembled with anger, with fear, with every emotion she’d kept bottled up inside for her whole life. “We were children, and you stole our childhood. You were so obsessed with turning us into your warriors that you never saw us as children. You turned me into a monster!”

 _Your own weakness made you what you are._ The great voice boomed as the eyes of the massive face glowed with heat lightning. _I gave you more chances than you ever deserved. I had such hopes for you, Nebula, and you disappointed me so many times, but I kept trying to make you strong._

Thanos’s face actually looked regretful. _I wanted you to be strong enough to survive in a universe whose only purpose is to crush and mangle every delicate and beautiful thing that exists. I have seen too many fragile wonders driven to extinction because they lacked the strength to survive._ His cloudy features took on a stony expression. _Strength makes it possible for every other quality to even be considered. Without strength, nothing else matters._

“And look at where your strength got you in the end.” Her voice still shook, and she was near to tears. “You ripped worlds apart to find the Stones, you slaughtered half the life in the universe, and for what?” She shook her head. “You never would have been happy. You never would have rested. And you know just as well as I do that your grand plan was a lie.”

 _A lie._ The clouds seemed to twist into a wry smile. _You understand so little. But tell me how I lied to myself, and then I will tell you why you’re wrong._

“You told yourself you were making a sacrifice for the greater good.” She stood tall and looked up at her father’s face as she had always done. But unlike every other time, now she did so without fear. “But how far into the future could you see? Did you think what you were doing would be permanent? Did you think that there wouldn’t come a time when the balance would be upset again?”

She felt herself gathering momentum and plunged ahead, her voice rising. “If I’d let you keep your little victory, if I’d let them stay dead, then I promise you one thing. Sometime down the line - no matter how long it took - the exact same thing would have happened again. All you would have done was just stretch out the timeline.”

 _So you admit it, then._ Thanos’s huge face took on a gloating smile of triumph. _The upsetting of the balance is inevitable._

“Maybe if things stay the way they are.” Nebula allowed him that small concession, waited a moment, and then smiled. “But you had the power to change that in any way you wanted. You could have created more resources, or better ways for people to use them. You could have shown them glimpses into the future and let them decide for themselves how to avoid it. You could have been a teacher, or a healer, or a provider, but you decided to be a murderer instead.”

She waited for his response, but none came.

“You decided on your path too long ago to ever let yourself even consider that there might have been another way,” she went on. “You’d made up your mind while you still had no power to change anything. And even when you’d gotten enough power to do things differently, you still followed the road you’d built for yourself when you were a different person.”

She shook her head. “Watching Titan’s destruction broke you. And you never thought to try to heal yourself before you tried to heal a universe that needed more from you than you wanted to give it.”

 _You think you understand me._ Thunder rumbled again, and the clouds that made up Thanos’s face began to shed rain. _You could never understand. You could never see things as I have seen them. You never saw the beauty of my homeworld as it once was; you only ever saw it as the wasteland it was turned into!_ Lightning flashed angrily. _By the stupid, shortsighted, ignorant fools who refused to listen to reason!_

“Like you’re doing right now?” She clasped her hands behind her, looked up at the face of her father in the sky, and shook her head gently. “You’re still refusing to listen to me when I tell you there’s another way. A better way.”

But trying to tell him wouldn’t be enough. She had to show him.

A flick of her finger was all it required. The landscape of his mind shifted, swirled, contorted in on itself, and finally coalesced into the blighted landscape of Titan. But they were no longer in Thanos’s mind. To do what she needed to do, they needed to be on the planet itself.

She stood on an outcropping of rusted metal that thrust out from the dusty ground like a finger. Thanos stood beside her, his face twisted with grief-spawned anger as he looked out over the ruin of his once-beautiful homeworld.

“You weren’t responsible for what happened to your home.” She spoke softly, almost reverently in this graveyard of a world. “But you can be responsible for making it beautiful again.”

She gestured to the ground below, where a brown leather sling bag had appeared from nowhere. Its open top revealed it to be full of seeds of every variety. Beside it were stacked a wooden-handled rake, spade, and hoe.

“Everything you need is right there.” She felt an odd sense of peace settle over her in this place. “No one will come here to disturb you, and you’ll have all the time in the world.”

“And what of the rest of the universe?” Thanos folded his arms over his chest, but kept his eyes fixed on the tools and the seed-sling.

“Life has to find equilibrium with itself,” she replied. “And no one, no matter how much power they wield, can force that to happen.”

She gestured back to the scorched earth of Titan. “But you have the power to repair this world. The rains will fall, the winds will blow, the seasons will change, and you will see your home become beautiful again with your own eyes.” She managed a small smile. “And it will be because of the work you’ve done with your own hands.”

And the last sight she saw as she faded away from Titan, returning to the site of the last battle, was her father on his hands and knees in the dirt, planting seeds.

She felt her boots touch solid ground again, saw the shapes of the heroes she’d resurrected swarming over each other, congratulating one another, embracing and cheering and celebrating. She saw her sister among them, locked in a passionate kiss with the human Quill while the other Guardians celebrated. And she felt the sudden urge to join them, to revel in her own triumph and the ending of the evil her father had done.

But her work was still unfinished.

She closed her eyes again, the Gauntlet humming gently on her hand, and tried to picture in her mind’s eye what she would have looked like had Thanos not destroyed her. It was almost impossible, for the changes had begun when she was only a child and continued for most of her life until she no longer had any clear image of her real self. But somewhere, deep in the back of her mind, with all the other memories that could cut her to the core…

The Gauntlet’s power washed over her again as she willed away the changes Thanos had made to her. Living flesh and blood replaced metal and plastic, synthetic material dissolving away as organic matter took its place. A tingling in her scalp surprised her as hair sprouted from a surface long since scoured smooth.

For a long moment, she was afraid to open her eyes. Afraid of what she would see, of whether she would appear to be as weak as she had always been made to believe. But hiding from herself - from her own image - would be the greatest weakness of all.

So she took a deep, shaky breath, opened her eyes, and conjured a mirror to see herself in.

The sight of herself made her breath catch in her throat. Her skin had reverted to a uniform light blue, the zigzag stripes of purple and the jutting extrusions of silver metal gone. Her eyes were no longer the glossy black of mechanical optic sensors, but a deep purple with maroon flecks. Her mechanical limbs had melted away, leaving smooth and unscarred blue skin in their place. And - most astonishingly of all - a mane of thick, dark, unruly hair spilled over her shoulders and halfway down her back.

She had remade herself as she was supposed to have been, she realized with an unsteady smile. As she should have had the chance to be. As she would have been, if Thanos had not had such absolute power over her.

The absolute power she herself still wielded.

She looked down at her left hand with a frown. The power of the Gauntlet was too great for anyone to possess. She’d used it for good, but the temptation to use it again would be irresistible. Next time, she might not be so careful with it. And if anyone else ever got hold of it…

She shook her head, her new hair tickling her face, and clenched her jaw. She would never allow anyone else to ever wield such power again. Not even herself.

Especially not herself.

And so she raised the Gauntlet one final time, feeling the power of the Stones surge through her, and felt the energy gather into a trembling ball in her fist and explode outward.

Carrying the Stones with it.

She scattered them far and wide across the infinitely many planes of existence in the multiverse. Across different places and planes and times and realities, where no one - not even herself - could ever hope to find them again. Where they would be safe from anyone who would ever dare to follow in her father’s footsteps, and where every living thing would finally be safe from them.

And then, after moving heaven and earth, time and space, reality and thoughts and fears and hopes, Nebula felt herself waver on her feet. Without the power of the Gauntlet to hold her up, she felt suddenly exhausted. She swayed, teetered, toppled - but someone caught her.

Gamora.

“I knew you could do it,” her sister’s voice sounded in her ear. Soft, warm, tinged with tears. Gamora’s arms were tight around her. “I’m so proud of you, Nebula.”

Nebula felt her own arms reach out, tentatively, hesitantly. Felt her own hands seek out her sister’s shoulders. Felt the guilt of all her missed chances sting at the backs of her eyelids, felt the gaping hole in herself that had yet to be filled. The hole that was the absence of her family.

But her family was here. Wasn’t it?

Gamora drew back, and Nebula could see her properly. Her face was split in a wide smile, but her eyes were red and her cheeks wet with tears.

For her?

“Come with us, Nebula.” Gamora clutched her hands. “You’ve more than earned a place with the Guardians.” She touched her face gently. “You have a home with us. A family.” She smiled, her eyes brimming again. “A sister.”

And Nebula, despite all her misgivings, all her brokenness, all her pain and exhaustion and all she’d been through in all her life, reached out and wrapped her arms around her sister for the first time she could recall. Hugged her tightly, and simply allowed herself a moment to enjoy it.

But she knew it couldn’t last.

“I want to,” she whispered truthfully. “But I need time.”

She pulled away from the embrace reluctantly, but took Gamora’s hands in her own.

“Thanos made me into who he wanted me to be,” she said regretfully. “And now I need to come to terms with who I am now.” She looked into her sister’s eyes. “I need to travel. To explore. To find out who I am, and who I want to be, and…” She heaved a sigh. “You’re going to tell me no, aren’t you?”

To her surprise, Gamora shook her head. “No,” she replied, a look of sadness briefly crossing her face. “I’d figured you’d want to do something like that. And it makes sense. It’s not easy to just start living a different life after such a long time.”

Gamora clutched Nebula’s hands, the corners of her mouth quirking upward even as her eyes remained sad. “But I always want you to remember that you have a place here. And a sister who loves you.”

“I will,” Nebula promised. And it was, she reflected, the most truthful thing she’d ever said.

EPILOGUE - THREE WEEKS LATER

“Wonderful,” Nebula scowled as she checked the console. “Still off by three parsecs.”

She’d asked for a ship for her journey, and the heroes had been only too happy to give her one. But whether it was the fault of the ship, or the odd cosmic energy still running rampant after the use of the Stones, or something entirely different, she’d been having trouble with the hyperspace navigation system ever since she’d first taken the helm. And now, she’d landed in one of the most inhospitable systems known.

“As if I _wanted_ to be in Shi’ar space,” she grumbled.

The Kree were bad news; everyone knew that. The Skrulls were worse yet. But for sheer instability, there was no matching the Shi’ar. Ever since the Empress had been deposed in that coup by her lunatic brother and her throwback of a sister, the Shi’ar Empire had been expanding its borders at a breakneck pace. And with its technology, there weren’t many who could stand in their way.

An alarm blared suddenly, the klaxon loud in her ears and every screen lighting up in hysterics. On the rear viewscreen, Nebula saw a huge green shape - the distinctive intersected double semicircle of a Shi’ar battle cruiser. There was no way she’d ever outrun it in a tiny ship like this, and with the navigation system compromised, she was a sitting duck.

Things seemed to happen in a rush after that. One minute, she was flipping switches and trying to open an emergency channel to the _Milano_ \- to at least let her sister know where to look for her body - and the next, there was a flash of red light and she found herself sprawled on the floor of an unfamiliar craft.

With a group of very unfamiliar creatures surrounding her.

A towering green reptilian creature with a small fluffy white thing perched on its shoulder like some sort of pet. A cybernetic humanoid with long, pointed ears and a plume of red hair. A female Mephitisoid with thick white fur, cat’s ears, and a bushy, black-striped tail. A green insectoid like a huge dragonfly. And a human male with curly brown hair and a smile that reminded her annoyingly of Quill.

“Where am I?” She clambered to her feet cautiously, mapping out the exact sequence of movements she’d need to reach her weapon. “And who are you?”

“Enemies of the Shi’ar,” replied the human easily. His smile broadened. “My name's Corsair. And these -” he gestured behind him at his companions. “-are the Starjammers.”

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos are appreciated. Thank you for reading!


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